Bass bonanza returning to Lake Guntersville

Several seasoned guides including captains Mike Carter and Mike Gerry have reported bass fishing at Guntersville in the last few weeks to be better than it has been in years, and considering that the lake was once the best in the nation, that's saying a lot.

Anglers at the lake had been reporting tough fishing for the last several years, so the bonanza this spring is welcome news not only for local fishermen but for guides, camp owners, marina operators and others who depend on the fishing for income.

Anglers have reported an explosion in action since the spawn, with some catching 40 to 50 fish from 3 to 5 pounds in a day on the water. The bass are mostly just off the edges of the spawning flats, in depths of 8 to 10 feet over scattered grass, where smart anglers have been locating them with bladed jigs, swimbaits, swim jigs and soft plastics. Some have also done well early and late with topwaters.

Actually, the phenomena of big schools of bass forming just after the spawn is not uncommon, as fish transition from the shallow nesting areas back toward the deeper channels and points where they'll spend hot weather. It's as if the fish are on a feeding binge to make up for the weight lost during the spawning process, when they're constantly on the move protecting the beds and don't feed often.

The big bite requires anglers to make smart use of electronics to find the concentrations, but once a school is located, it's likely to show up on the same spot day after day so long as water temperature doesn't rise or fall abruptly. Anglers with side-scan sonar have an advantage, because they can graph the edge of the drops without actually motoring over them and spooking the fish.

It may take a few hours of graphing to locate a school, but when one is found it may contain dozens of quality bass 3 pounds and up, and at this time of year they're likely to be in a biting mood.

The best part of this news is that it confirms what Alabama DCNR biologists have been telling us for several years, that there's nothing fundamentally wrong with the lake, and that when a strong year-class or hatch of largemouths grows to maturity, it can still produce great catches for several years.

Based on that premise, it would appear that the best is still ahead at Guntersville, as all those fish that weighed 3 to 4 pounds this spring will weigh 5 to 6 pounds next year and hopefully many will survive to become the 7 to 9 pound lunkers we all dream of 3 or 4 years from now.

Of course, in a lake fished as hard as Guntersville, there's considerable attrition. Not many bass anglers keep largemouths for the table, but with literally hundreds of tournaments on the lake each year, the death of a portion of the fish caught as a result of being hauled around in livewells and then dragged to the scales cannot be avoided. It's obviously not enough to ruin the fishing in a lake or Guntersville would not be seeing the rebirth it's showing at present, but it can have an impact.

One thing tournament anglers can do to prevent the excessively rapid decline of a good year-class of fish is to avoid scheduling tournaments in the heat of the summer. Bass survive much better in cooler water when stressed, so if the handling is avoided from June through September, far fewer wind up wasted.

The current hot bite at the lake will no doubt slow as the heat of June begins to penetrate the water and drives the fish out to the deep ledges and shell bars, but even then the fish will be there, and enough big ones are likely to be caught to make this one of the more interesting summers on the lake in some time.